Shintar did not seem to enjoy fighting Deathwing much because he is too big to see. The sense of scale gets all thrown off and things just get confusing and disorienting.

The solution is obvious: Make him even bigger.

If Deathwing were even bigger, we could have the fight on him.

Phase one: Dodging claws as you run toward him with the goal of everyone being securely hanging onto a claw before he takes flight.

Phase two: Stab his ankles. Gnomes do 50% extra damage due to having a higher ankle-stabbing skill. Much of this phase is "dance" as you have to move to avoid him smashing you against walls.

Phase three: Climb onto his back and attack the plates. As they are broken, fire blasts out, breaking LoS and being an instant kill. It is important to kill them in something like a reasonable pattern. Black dragons are the main opponents, swooping in to grab people and fly them away. You must kill them before they can fly too high, somewhat like valkyr and LK in ICC.

Phase four: Deathwing is spewing fire from everywhere and clawing like mad. The goal is to run away and hide, fighting through waves of enemies while he slowly drags himself along after you (remember, his ankles are a mess). The phase ends with the escape ship flying away, a 30 second timer which begins when the first person is fully on board.

Phase five: You fly away and Deathwing explodes in the background, showering the deck with loot.

5
comments:

*vlad*
said...

You do fight on top of him, and then by exposing his spine, Thrall is able to knock him down into the sea. Then you get to fight Chaos-Wing. He is no longer a dragon, but a head and 4 tentacles. I think it's cool.

I guess it's hard to find the "perfect boss size"; personally, I want the big baddies to be huge and impressive. Ragnaros is the minimum. I missed that in WoW in general, epic scale outdoor bossfights - in dungeons too, they were usually small.

I watched the GW2 gameplay video from the Gamescom and one of your first encounters as lvl 1 (!) is already some colossus - that's more like it!an alternative to size is also multi-mob packs; I'd like to see more of those in future games, not just for special bossfights but general outdoor mobs.

Actually I think EVERYTHING is too big in WoW, and we're so used to it that a door 5m high seems small !It was interesting going back to that dungeon in Silverpine. Things were more reasonably sized in classic WoW and that dungeon, which is almost realistically sized, felt so cramped compared to the more recent ones.

Similarly, humanoid bosses are sometimes twice the size of a player. I know it's so they stand out when 25 raiders gang up on him, but it's a bit ridiculous.And for more monstrous bosses, we're already just scratching their toes.

@*vlad*: In that case, I think we should have to fight inside him, crawling through his mouth to stab his lungs. High fire resistance required.

@Syl: I think it's all relative to the group size. If I'm with five people, I don't need something really tall, and especially not wide. That spreads out the group too much. But in a raid, particularly of 40 people, then we need the space.

@Edawan: Toe scratches can be deadly. I'm playing Stalker again and one of the mutant enemies is a rat. It's not big, but they come in large groups and can be hard to hit. They aren't very dangerous, if you keep them in sight.